Let's Get Out of Afghanistan Now

American soldiers engaging in "social work" and nation building in Afghanistan

Despite being a hawk and a believer that the United States should project its power, all I can say now is that the time has come to get out of Afghanistan.

Carl von Clausewitz defined war as the continuation of politics by other means. Our politicians and generals are defining politics as the continuation of war by other means. This is dooming the war to failure and American soldiers once more to victims of policies carried on on the coffins of heroes.

Wars should be fought with one goal in mind: Victory. Fighting a war differently when it’s deemed an insurgency rather than a conventional war is letting the enemy know that we are putting our troops off limits in certain areas. These areas become then the places where the enemy chooses to hide in and fight from. Combine this with rules of engagement (ROE) that tie the hands of troops; announce a withdrawal date and presto, you have created a formula for defeat.

This new methodology of warfare stems from a belief that the majority of Afghanis are peace-loving victims of the Taliban andal-Qaeda and that killing one of them will make radicals of many. The belief in this concept is at the root of the new ROE. But this is nonsensical. Liberals believe that we are all equal in our ambitions and creed, and that given the choice the entire world would vote for peace and choose to become Jeffersonian democrats. In Afghanistan, Afghanis will tell us what we want to hear, and then they will do to us as much damage they can. This has been their modus operandi for centuries, and the British and Russians can attest to it.

The fact is that in the Muslim world exists a combination of inferiority complex, intertwined with Jihadism, Islamism, and a historical tradition of violence that is incongruent with our democratic traditions. The minority that wants peace and democracy is too terrified of the consequences of cooperation with our troops knowing our defeatist attitude.

America should announce that we are leaving, but that the drones will remain. Afghanis once again will be free to stone women who were raped, hang homosexuals, kill the infidels, deal in drugs, prohibit education of women, reinstate the burka, cane women who are caught unaccompanied by their husbands, and let the kites vanish once more from the skies of Kabul.

But let them know that if the terrorists return, the drones will hunt them, and no place will be sacred enough to prevent our bombs from finding their targets. If the cowards hide among innocent civilians, so be it. I’d rather see innocent civilians dead in Afghanistan, than innocent civilians dead in Manhattan.